Mondly: The online language course in the test

Test: Mondly is currently the shooting star among the language apps. We tested how Mondly compares to the competition in terms of structure, content and costs.

Test the language learning app Mondly

Mondly is still quite new to the app market and wants to compete with established language learning programs such as Babbel, Duolingo or Rosetta Stone. And so far it seems to be working quite well.

• Mondly impresses with its intuitive operation - both in the browser and in the mobile app. The user interface is clear and modern.
• Mondly offers a wide range of languages. You can choose between 33 different languages. In addition to the classic languages ​​such as English, Spanish or French, unusual languages ​​are also available, such as Persian, Hebrew, Finnish, Vietnamese, Hindi or Indonesian.
• Mondly offers general language courses as well as special courses, for example for the hotel industry. The standard language course consists of 40 chapters, each divided into seven lessons. Various contents and situations are covered, such as small talk, emergencies, numbers or shopping. In the courses there is a daily lesson, a repetition manager and an augmented reality where you can immerse yourself in the foreign language properly.
• Mondly offers a large selection of different exercises - among other things, you have to assign new vocabulary to the corresponding pictures or recreate spoken sentences. You will practice reading and writing as well as your pronunciation and listening comprehension.
• The individual lessons are quite entertaining. You don't need more than ten minutes for any of the exercises.
• At the end of each lesson there is a summary that repeats the newly learned content.
• Mondly offers three different levels of difficulty: beginners, intermediate and advanced.

So Mondly scores

Mondly scores not only with the intuitive operation already mentioned, but also with technology and content.

• The chatbot is the highlight. With this artificial intelligence, you can talk and thus intuitively learn or consolidate new vocabulary and grammar.
• The chatbot consists of eight chapters on the topics: greeting, restaurant, hotel, cards, entertainment, shopping, meeting and taxi.
• Often a friendly woman asks you a question that you then have to answer. This creates a short dialogue.
• Another big plus of the app is that it constantly motivates the learner. Due to the short and varied learning units, this often leads to an “I want to continue learning” instead of an “I have to”. This in turn has the positive effect that you don't give up and get better results while studying.

Small didactic weaknesses

In addition to all the advantages, there are also small weaknesses at Mondly.

• On the one hand, small didactic weaknesses always stand out. In the exercises, vocabulary is sometimes jumbled up wildly.
• An example: You are just learning the word "see" in Spanish, which means "ver". In the following sentence examples, Mondly no longer uses the word "ver", but the verb "mirar". The meaning of both words is similar, but the learning effect does not occur.
• As a user, you often get the impression that a machine is at work in the background, occasionally confusing the vocabulary and thus causing one or two errors - similar to the Google translation.
• There are also slight deficits in voice recognition, which is used in the chatbot and augmented reality. Voice recognition does not always understand the user. Incorrectly understood sentences are sometimes passed through as correct. This is less than ideal for learning a language. Here, the technology does not seem to be mature enough.

Cost of the app

The good news first: You can also use Mondly for free. In this case, the range of languages ​​and functions is clearly limited.

• You get full access to all learning units with a subscription. However, you should be careful here so that you do not conclude the wrong subscription. This can quickly become expensive - up to 480 euros a year.

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